A student asks:
One of the most difficult things about learning Finnish so far has been vocabulary. I feel like it just doesn’t stick! Even when I manage to learn something, it shows up in a completely different form. Any tips? My answer: Thank you for the great question! In my experience, people are really different when it comes to learning vocabulary, and it takes a bit of trial and error to find out what works best for you. In my opinion, the very best way to learn vocabulary in Finnish is seeing and hearing the words in context by reading and listening and using them by speaking and writing. No matter what kind of learner you are, seeing and hearing words over and over again, looking them up or asking someone for them over and over again is a must. It’s important to know that it’s normal to need to look up the same word several times before it becomes a part of your vocabulary, first your passive vocabulary and then eventually your active vocabulary. It’s easy to get frustrated when you feel like you “should” know the word already, but it can help a lot to know that this is a normal part of language learning. This doesn’t mean that specific techniques for learning vocabulary separately aren’t useful, they absolutely are! Here are a few that are worth trying: 1. Connecting the new word with something that you already know. This can be another Finnish word, but it can also be an image, a word in another language that sounds similar or even something like a feeling that you get when you think about the word. 2. Playing with words, melody and rhythm. Writing little poems, connecting words or sentences with melodies to make songs or repeating words, phrases or sentences in a specific rhythm works really well for a lot of people. You don’t need to be a great writer or a musician to try this technique! 3. Flashcards, especially online ones, are really popular. However, I’ve noticed that while they work brilliantly for a lot of people, not everyone gets great results with them. If you do decide to try them out, I recommend you either make paper ones or go for an app that has some kind of system to help you learn learn. Popular, good quality flascards apps include Anki and Memrise, which both help you learn systematically with enough revision. Making your own can seem inefficient, but writing the word down by hand will help you learn the word much better than going for a ready-made deck. 4. Sticky notes. Write the word on a sticky note and and stick it somewhere where you can see it every day. This really works, but again, it’s not for everyone. No matter which technique you’re using, make sure you’re learning the the different forms of the word, not just the dictionary form. When learning Finnish, it’s a good idea to learn the word in the dictionary form, but its stem or stems. The stem is the form that you add all the different endings to. Many words just have one form, like kirja ‘book’, but quite a few have two: puhelin ‘phone’ stem: puhelime- A select few have four: vesi ‘water’ stems: vede-, vete- partitive: vettä If you’re not sure which forms to learn, check out this post where I explain this in more detail. If you’re at the very beginning of your learning journey, just learn the dictionary form or entire phrases without thinking about the forms yet, that will come later! What has worked for you when learning vocabulary? Let me know in the comments!
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There are three very common verbs for starting in Finnish:
1. alkaa Alan kohta tehdä töitä. - I will start working soon. Kurssi alkaa huomenna. - The course will start tomorrow. 2. aloittaa Aloitan kohta työt. - I will start work soon. Aloitan kurssin huomenna. - I will start the course tomorrow. 3. ruveta Rupean kohta tekemään töitä. - I will start working soon. Or in spoken Finnish: Mä rupeen kohta tekeen töitä. A question that I answer almost weekly is the difference between the first two different verbs for starting, alkaa and aloittaa. There are already at least two great explanations about this in English already, this one by Random Finnish Lesson and this one by Uusi kielemme, so I’m not going to go deeper into that here. Instead, I want to talk a little bit more about ruveta. Ruveta is often missing for Finnish textbooks, but it’s a very common verb in spoken Finnish. It’s also used in written Finnish, but it’s a bit rarer there, which probably explains why it tends to be missing from textbooks for beginners. Ruveta goes with the MA-infinitive or third infinitive in the mihin-form, or the maan-form of the verb: Rupean kohta tekemään töitä. - I will start working soon. Ruvetaan syömään. - Let's start to eat. Hän rupesi kirjoittamaan kirjaa vuosi sitten. - She started to write a book a year ago. Rupean nyt lähtemään. - "I will start to leave now", meaning I will start getting ready to leave. In spoken Finnish, this form often gets shortened, and the ea in rupean turns to ee: Mä rupeen nyt tekeen töitä. Se rupes kirjottaan kirjaa vuos sitten. Mä rupeen nyt lähteen. There's a wonderful free online spoken language course, Puhutsä suomee, that has some good exercises if you’d like to practice these forms. Here’s a short video of mine if you’d like to listen to some examples with alkaa, aloittaa and ruveta. Did you know all three already? Let me know in the comments! Usman asks:
Sometimes i get confused about “niin”, its used so much for different purposes but mostly in puhekielli, is it ok to use in essay or fromal letter or depends on usage ?? Hi Usman! Thank you for the great question! Niin is used a lot in Standard Written Finnish (kirjakieli or yleiskieli), not just puhekieli (but it’s also used a whole lot in puhekieli). It has a few different uses in written Finnish, here are, in my opinion, the three main ones: 1. Niin kuin - as or like: Niin kuin alussa sanoin... - = As I said in the beginning... 2. For emphasising adjectives: Ostin niin ison kahvin, etten jaksanut juoda kaikkea. = I bought such a big coffee that I couldn't drink it all. 3. With kuin (note that this is different from niin kuin in 1): Niin pian kuin mahdollista. = As soon as possible. In spoken Finnish, niin is used a lot more, especially when reacting to what someone else is saying. - Se on 20 minuuttia myöhässä! - Niin, pitäisikö sille soittaa? - She's 20 minutes late! - Right, should we call her? - Tää kahvi on tosi hyvää! - Niin on! - This coffee is really good! - Yes, it is! Kielitoimiston sanakirja has a great, comprehensive article about niin in both written and spoken Finnish, which you can read here. Myat asks: Why doesn't "kirkko" change kk to k in location cases? Hi Myat! Thank you for the question! Kpt-changes definitely baffle a lot of learners of Finnish. So here we go, it's time to talk about every Finnish learner's favorite topic: kpt-changes also known as consonant gradation, astevaihtelu and kpt-vaihtelu. Kirkko ‘church’ actually does have a kpt change where one k disappears (kk:k), it just doesn't happen in every location case. Let's take a look at the different stems or forms that you add endings to: kirkko – nominative or dictionary form weak stem: kirko- strong stem: kirkko- To get to the weak stem, we have removed one of the two k’s in the nominative form. In this word type, you need the weak stem for most forms of the word, including the location cases Missä (inessive) and Mistä (elative): kirkossa – inside the church kirkosta – from the church (from inside the church) We also need the weak stem for all the outside versions of the location cases: kirkolla – at the church kirkolta – from the church, outside version kirkolle – to the church For the Mihin or illative form of the word, you need the strong stem kirkko-: kirkkoon – into the church Whenever a word ends in o, it follows this type of pattern for kpt changes: the stem is strong in the nominative or dictionary form (kirkko), in the Mihin-form or illative (kirkkoon) as well as in the essive (kirkkona, ‘as a church’) and the partitive (kirkkoa). All the rest of the singular forms are made with the weak stem, kirko-. This also goes words that end in one ö, u, y, a or ä. If you would like to read more about kpt changes, the website Uusi kielemme does a phenomenal job of explaining it all. I also recommend Leila White's A Grammar Book of Finnish, which is my go-to for double checking grammar rules. However, remember that choosing the wrong stem isn’t the end of the world. Whatever you do, don’t get stuck on perfecting your kpt-changes before moving on to other topics, these will come in time! Me mentiin naimisiin tässä kirkossa. - We got married in this church.
Me käveltiin yhdessä kirkkoon. - We walked to church together. Vilppulan kirkko, kuva: Vesahjr, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Reading in the language you want to learn is one of the best ways to level up your language skills. But it can be really difficult to form a regular reading habit and stay motivated. Luckily, there are wonderful teachers who can help you do just that! One of them is Hanna Männikkölahti from Random Finnish Lesson. In this guest post, Hanna talks about her new course to help you to read a whole book in Finnish. Hi there! This is Hanna from Random Finnish Lesson / Private Finnish Lessons, guest posting on Mari’s blog. Mari and I have known each other since October 2017, when she introduced herself to me on Facebook. I had been offering private online lessons for a while, and Mari was just about to start her business. Initially, we chatted on Messenger, but now we also meet face-to-face several times a year. I’ve been following Mari‘s Steps towards YKI courses, and we’ve talked a lot about online courses that combine independent work with group meetings. I’m excited to announce that I’ve finally put together my own course! It’s all about reading ‘Tuntematon Kimi Räikkönen’ in easy Finnish within a month. You can read a sample of the book here. In my course, students will read the book on their own, but they will also watch videos where I discuss the book or read it aloud with them. I’ve also curated the best Kimi Räikkönen videos on YouTube and organized them to complement the book as you read. Students can chat about the book as much as they want in my Telegram group, and we’ll meet four times on Zoom throughout the month. Here’s a link to my blog post about the course: https://randomfinnishlesson.blogspot.com/2024/07/tuntematonkimiraikkonen.html You can listen to a podcast episode where I discuss the course in Finnish. My podcast is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Inspired by this upcoming course and excited about my ChatGPT skills, I finally finished a Memrise course featuring vocabulary from ‘Tuntematon Kimi Räikkönen’. If you want to join the course, send me an email at [email protected]. I will send you an invoice and a link to the course materials. The early bird price is €39 if you sign up by July 15. After that, the price is €55. I’m looking forward to having you in the course! I honestly believe there’s no better support for reading a book in easy Finnish. 😊 Best regards, Hanna I very often get asked a version of this question: I'm preparing for YKI, and I need to pass the writing part. I can't attend a traditional classroom course, but I don't feel like I'm making enough progress on my own. Private lessons are over my budget. Is there another way to get feedback from you for my writing? I've designed a course for this specific purpose. It's called Steps towards YKI: Writing, and the next chapter is coming up in August 2024. You get access to the course materials on signing up and can start studying whenever works best for you. Then, once the interactive part of the course starts in August, you can share your work with me in a dedicated Telegram group or on Google Docs, where I read your work, comment on it and make suggestions on what to focus on next to get to your goal. The course is open for enrollment now. Here's the course page. If you're reading this after August 2024, the next interactive part of the course will be in January 2025. Lämpimästi tervetuloa, a warm welcome! José Carlos writes: How to say in Finnish the following? 1. I CUT my finger with a knife. 2. She CUT my hair. 3. I CUT the paper with scissors. 4. I CUT the onions in slices. 5, I CUT the potatoes in cubes. 6. I CUT my hand with a broken glass. Hi José! Thanks for the great question! The verb you want for all of these is leikata with different forms to go with it. Let’s look at them one by one. 1. I CUT my finger with a knife. Leikata + mihin Leikkasin sormeen, where sormi ‘finger’ is in the mihin form. So literally, I cut into my finger. 2. She CUT my hair. Hän leikkasi minun hiukseni. Here, hiukset is the object of the sentence. Because hiukset ‘hair’ (as in the hair on you head) almost always goes in the plural (so literally: hairs), you have two options for the form of the obejct: the t-plural – also known as plural nominative – and the plural partitive. So without the my, the sentence would be either Hän leikkasi hiukset or Hän leikkasi hiuksia. Both are correct, but there’s a little difference: hiukset is what is known as the total object, so all the hair was cut and the action has been completed all the way to the end. The partive hiuksia means that the process is still ongoing or only partially complete. I chose hiukset, as without more context it feels more intuitively correct that the haircut would be completed, but hiuksia also works just fine! Now, we still have the my to add. In standard written Finnish, this is done with minun (my) and a possessive suffix, which goes on the singular stem of the word in the t-plural, like this: Hän leikkasi minun hiukseni. For a more informal and easier to form version, you can also just use the personal pronoun: Hän leikkasi minun hiukset. 3. I CUT the paper with scissors. Leikkasin paperia saksilla. or Leikkasin paperin saksilla. Again, the choice between paperia (partitive object) or paperin (total object) depends on what you want to say: partitive for an ongoing process and paperin for a completed action. 4. I CUT the onions in slices. Leikkasin sipulit viipaleiksi. Viipaleiksi is a form called the translative, and it’s used for all kinds of transformations, like whole onions becoming slices or students graduating and becoming Finnish teachers: Valmistuin suomen kielen opettajaksi. – I graduated as a Finnish teacher. 5. I CUT the potatoes in cubes. Leikkasin perunat kuutioiksi. 6. I CUT my hand with a broken glass. Leikkasin käteni rikkinäisellä lasilla. This would be a completely literal translation of your sentence. However, in this sentence it sounds like you were holding the piece of glass in your hand and cut your hand with it (like you did in sentence number 1), presumably by accident. If the broken glass is on a table, you pick it up and accidentally cut your hand with it, the Finnish version would be something like this: Satutin käteni rikkinäiseen lasiin. So: I hurt my hand with a broken glass. Would you like to study with me?
One question that I get asked over and over is some form of this: How do I become fluent in Finnish? Is it even possible? I of course always answer, yes, it is! Every student that I have ever known who has put in the work and kept going has gotten there. But don't just take it from me. Lidiia Salo, Finnish learner, B2 level Finnish speaker and founder of the wonderful YKIPass community, has agreed to share her language learning journey with us in this guest post. My Finnish Language Learning Journey and |
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Ask a Finnish Teacher / Toiminimi Mari NikonenBUSINESS ID (Y-Tunnus) 2930787-4 VAT NUMBER FI29307874 Kaupintie 11 B 00440 Helsinki If you'd like to send me something in the mail, please email me for my postal address. [email protected] +358 40 554 29 55 Tietosuojaseloste - Privacy policy |